BEIJING - Exactly 100 days to go before the 2008 Olympic Games, Beijing keeps pushing forward to carry out the promise at bidding of making a most memorable event as Chinese characters highlight every step of the preparation.
Construction of venues, marketing program and recruitment of volunteers, as well as the design of the Olympic emblem, torch, mascots and medals, have all showcased the traditional aesthetic taste of China and the oriental value.
The Beijing Organizing Committee for the 2008 Olympic Games (BOCOG) has prepared 37 venues for the August's medal competitions in 28 medal sports, among which the National Stadium and the National Aquatics Center, nicknamed the Water Cube due to its blue membrane that looks like bubble wrap, have been the most notable ones and won high praise from all sides.
Known as the Bird's Nest, the National Stadium, with eye-catching structure of twisted steel beams, has been compared to a base for athletes to start "flying", and is reckoned a lucky sign by the Chinese with meanings of hope and future.
"It's a wonderful combine of conception and connotation on an architecture, perfectly showing the traditional value and modern creativity of Asia," said Kwon Gye-hyun, the corporate vice president of the world's leading electronics producer and Olympics' TOP sponsor Samsung.
The stadium has completed construction and been delivered for use at first test event on April 18 when most of visitors, citizens and foreigners, came with stirring mood at the first glimpse on the 91,000-seat architectural jewel of the Beijing Olympics.
Apart from the effort by the Games' organizers, Olympic passion of the whole country has made the 2008 marketing an unprecedented successful one.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) approved last March for the first time in history the Beijing 2008 organizers to produce and to sell the tridimensional models of the Olympic torch, known as the "Lucky Cloud".
Just hours after the leading batch of the models being put on sale in Beijing's central Olympic store, the commemorative products, made of odds off the steel beams building up the Bird's Nest and priced 2,900 RMB per piece, were sold out in a rush.
